Spam in the queue

A slightly different sort of spam in my queue yesterday. Interesting that it’s pretty much identical from two different email addresses:

And:

I’m kind of wondering what the point of this is—variant of the Nigerian 419 scam? What's the deal with being 24 years old? What the hell's a "check assist manager"? 

On the surface, not too different from the come-ons I get from Farmers Insurance agencies in Fremont every time I update my résumé on Monster.

But I’m rather charmed by the name “Ollie Apple”. I’ll have to work that one into a novel or screenplay some time.

Yes, Virginia, they're just all idiots

I have to say that those cards in Virginia’s House of Delegates (the state Lege, as Molly Ivins used to call its Texas counterpart) are giving our Congressmorons a run for their money.

Actually—that’s what they’re literally intending to do: mint their own coins. On account of they think the Fed is leading us all into hell in a handbasket. 

(Look, don’t ask me how you get anywhere, much less hell, in a handbasket. 1. I don’t exactly know what a handbasket is, although I’m thinking probably looks like a dressed-down Easter basket. 2. It’s something my father used to say. A lot.)

They’ve not yet got so far as to start melting down the wedding rings of the wives of plantation owners. Just voted two to one to commission a study on how they’d go about doing that. The charge is being led by Republicans; whatever that might mean.

I know nothing, of course—I’ve been out of the Commonwealth since 2008. But apparently the good men at Richmond (or “the Holy City”, as my thesis advisor used to refer to it) haven’t read about the whole misery of the early US under the Articles of Confederation, when each of the 13 states could issue its own currency & none had to accept anyone else’s. Do they really think Amazon is going to take Virginia nickels?

Or they’ve forgot about that little dust-up from 1861-65 when they pretty much crapped out on the whole concept that individual states (even confederated states) could go their notional own way. I’m thinking Appomattox Court House, here, Delegates. Ring a bell?

Honestly—you just have to wonder whether these buffoons are smoking something besides tobacco down there.

Piteously slain and murdered

It has been confirmed through DNA analysis that bones of a man found last September in a Leicester car park are those of Richard III, last of the Yorkist kings of England, and last king to die on the field of battle. He was killed on Bosworth Field by forces of Henry Tudor in 1485, age 32.

I know it’s a chink in my Armor of Cynicism (okay—it’s a thumping great crevasse in my Armor of Cynicism), but I’ve always thought that Richard got an undeserved bad rep courtesy of Henry’s spin machine, which was then embellished by Shakespeare’s tragedy about the winter of our discontent.

Henry was a half-Welsh usurper who was trying to establish legitimacy for himself and his dynasty. Shakespeare’s patron for most of his career was Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor line (it lasted but three generations), so he was basically sucking up to the boss when he wrote about a twisted hunchback who was the personification of evil.

He is presumed to have ordered the murders of his nephews in the Tower of London in 1483; sons of Richard’s late brother Edward IV, they were alleged to have been got rid of to remove any question of legitimacy to his wearing the crown. There’s a whole lot of hoo-ha about this—whether Edward’s marriage to the princes’ mother was actually legal, whether the boys were legitimate heirs, and who would benefit most from their deaths. There’s also a lot of hoo-ha about Richard being a tyrant, a madman and a disastrous ruler. But I don’t believe the facts that have come down to us bear that second lot of hoo-ha out, and I do believe that the hoo-hawers ought to take a good look at the early years of Henry VII’s reign when he was solidifying the throne.

(The hoo-ha has not come to an end with the discovery of Richard’s bones. The cities of Leicester—where he was killed/found—and York—his home town—have both laid claim to him, with rights to entomb him and get all the subsequent tourist business. I believe Leicester has won out—after all, they actually have the skeleton in their possession.

(But what I find fascinating is that, when she was sounded out as to whether Richard might be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey with other kings of England, Elizabeth II—whose dynasty possibly wouldn’t be sitting on the throne if Richard hadn’t been deposed—has made it known that she would not be amused by this. Talk about being a sore winner.)

Richard died with a sword in his hand; his body was mutilated and ultimately buried within a Franciscan friary (because that’s how you treat defeated enemies when you need to lay a foundation for your own precarious legitimacy).

And here’s what the City of York recorded at the time, ‘King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, was through great treason…piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city.’

Tweeting holiness

Here’s someone you don’t expect to find on Twitter: the Dalai Lama.

Well, maybe that’s not strictly true—why wouldn’t you find him on Twitter? I understand even Pope Benedict XVI is now on the social media platform. Although I’m laying odds that he’s got some cardinal/minion posting the actual, you know, tweets.

Of course, it’s possible that there’s some Buddhist equivalent of a cardinal—an abbot or the like—tweeting for His Holiness of Dharmasala. I mean, I expect that living in the moment would kind of exclude tweeting about it, since nothing says monkey mind like Twitter uploads from your iPhone.

Whatever.

What interested me about the Dalai Lama’s profile is that—as of the day I found it—he had more than six million followers. And he was following no one.

Well—I suppose…whom would you follow if you were he?

On the other hand, His Holiness the Bishop of Rome only has around 1.5 million followers; but he’s following eight people.

Only it turns out that the eight people he’s following are…all himself:

Make of that what you will. And peace out.

Penises with teeth--for future reference

Yesterday there was a commemoration in the SF Chronicle of one of their film critics, who—in addition to reviewing movies—does a Q&A column in the Sunday entertainment section of the paper. It’s called “Ask Mick LaSalle”, because—as it happens, his name is Mick LaSalle and people write in to excoriate him, praise him and ask questions about pictures.

Since I’ve only been reading the paper for a couple of years (and only the Sunday edition, since their delivery person in San José couldn’t seem to actually, you know, deliver), I haven’t really paid attention to him.

But yesterday’s retrospective had one vignette that caught my attention; it was a Q/A from 9 April 2006:

“Dear Mr. LaSalle: From one young, aspiring journalist to a seasoned reporter, thank you for the realistic review of King Kong. Your line about the ‘penises with teeth’ is spot-on.

“Ted R. Utoft, St, Paul, Minn.

“Dear Mr. Utoft: Thank you, son. The first rule of journalism -- something your teachers will never tell you -- is that you should always try to get the phrase ‘penises with teeth’ into an article, any article, even when out of context. This is especially important early in your career, as a way of letting folks know that a bright young talent has arrived on the scene. Try this yourself in your school newspaper, and if anyone tries to stand in the way of your creativity, start knocking over furniture. As you represent the generation that will someday replace me, I want to help you succeed in every way possible.”

The review references “an attack by creatures that look like penises with teeth.” Since I’ve not seen the actual, you know, flick, I have no idea who/what these creatures might be. But it might be worthwhile recording it and then fast-forwarding it through to find out.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to work on getting the key phrase into more of my posts.